2011: The year I wanted to lick my son.

Farewell to longish lie-ins on Christmas.
I was woken at 5am by someone shouting "I need the front door open!"
For it is Nikolaus, the 6th of December, fill your boots with chocolate, don't confuse him with Santa, time.

Marek? Who is Marek??? Who cares. You had me at "hello".

I believe in Nikolaus. Mostly because this year he seemed to have been thinking of me too. The kids put their boots out just before they went to bed, and just before I went to bed I handily remembered that I had forgotten to fill them. That would have been a bummer for the early risers this morning. I would have had to have said that patently their behaviour hadn't been deemed good enough this year and empty boots meant that they were in for a darn good spanking. However, when I opened the door last night to my delight, the boots had already been filled! With Lindt Santas. And not just that. But 'Marek' above was sitting on the doormat. In true Cinderella style, I know Marek was left for me, because he fits in my boot. And as for all this sharing nonsense the kids are coming away with, well, it's funny how I only hear that word when they're not the ones skipping in circles up and down the hall, cradling their Santa-shaped-built-for-diabetics-who'll-happily-take-another-zillion-units-of-insulin-just-to-cover-this-breakfast. Uh-huh, you want to share? You can have the ribbon at the top. 


Orla, who seems to have inherited Stevie's self-control has gone off to school with a small chocolate hippo (that would have been from me obviously - totally off-theme) which she's keeping until lunchtime. Hamish on the other hand, sat in a huff because he wanted to eat all the chocolate for breakfast and was being forced to eat at-least-some-toast before being let loose on a Lindt Santa. I don't know who he takes after to be honest. Must be some distant relation on Stevie's side...

There goes at least 50 cents worth down the drain.

And I can honestly say, this is the first time ever that I have thought "I'd quite like to lick your hands clean" and had to steel myself to say "Let's get you to the bathroom without touching ANYTHING on the way".

Links:
'The Local' gives the lowdown on Nikolaus (http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111206-15915.html)

My green fingered son

My neighbours will be the people with green and blue stains around their mouths until the days they die.

I thought it would be a nice thing to do to make Christmas biscuits with the kids and give them as a little thankyou gift to our upstairs neighbour in thanks for the Dec. 6th gifts she gave the kids. Especially as I wanted to experiment with these pre-made biscuit mix things that I've seen loads of in the fridges of the supermarkets.

We had great fun this afternoon with cutters and the kids could quite happily have made biscuits all afternoon. Hamish's were a little more rustic in style compared to Orla's. Then we baked them, let them cool, and I unleashed the coloured writing icing.

By the time we got to the icing stage the kids had started stripping off. Orla managed to keep her t-shirt on, but Hamish prefers to decorate in the nude. It wasn't until right at the end i.e. the icing was all finished, that Hamish moved from decorating biscuits to colouring in his tummy. Then when I went to get him cleaned up it was nice to discover that in fact it was more like food colouring than just icing. If Kita ask I'm going to tell them it's vegetables that have stained his fingers and stomach. Excessive broccoli ingestion.

Celebrating the 6th

On the 4th of Decmber it was our 6 month anniversary of life in Berlin. We have all celebrated this with a delightful sick bug that has had us running out of sheets (Hamish keeps being sick in the bed) and we've all felt utterly hideous for the past couple of days. Orla is much better and seems to have had it the mildest and I am finally getting over it today.

Anyway, today is the 6th of December, don't you know. As in the day that (not Santa) Nikolaus lets us know how good or naughty my children have been. Sadly I missed my 'discussion' with my upstairs neighbour on this topic: I'm hoping the sound of wretching coming from downstairs stopped her from ringing our bell. Nonetheless, I dragged myself to the door this morning out of pure nosiness, and to see whether we really were going to be stick recipients. But no! She had used the childrens boots and put these little felt Christmas bags in them.

The contents included: a Kinder chocolate Santa; Lindt chocolate squares (I think Nikolaus might have meant some of these for me); a bag of Christmassy biscuits; and a healthy little bag of raisins and nuts. You're disappointed aren't you? You thought we'd get sticks, didn't you?

Update: I've just read a really good explanation of the 6th Dec Celebrations in 'The Local' (Germany's news in English)

The Advent-ure Twins

-6 outside today. I have no idea how we will go out when it's -20 or worse. The kids are moaning how cold their faces are at this temperature. I can see us all wearing those terrible balaclavas that only have eyeholes and a mouthhole. Never thought I'd be working the ye olde terrorist/SAS look this year.

As you can see we got the Playmobil advent calendars out. I started off with just the Santa one, but Stevie pointed out there would be an awful lot of arguments about who opened the door.So we also have a nice horsey one too. If there's one thing I utterly love about this country it's Playmobil.

I am looking forward to seeing how these scenes pan out. Already we have a horse visiting Santa's office keeping the post box company.

I met my upstairs neighbour this morning on my way out. She was telling me she wanted to leave some old boots outside our door for the kids, and then started talking about books. I left feeling a bit confused, and later I asked my German teacher for more information. She told me that this is a celebration on the 6th December. The boots are left outside the door on the evening of the 5th and if you've been good then you get presents. According to Wikipedia if you've been naughty you get left a tree branch. My neighbour is coming down tomorrow afternoon to discuss this with me, presumably to remind me why it's sticks all round for us lot.

My two would be overjoyed to find they'd been left sticks. All the better to poke each others eyes out.